


Plus One

by tigersilver



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Accidental Dating, Fluff and Angst, Harry Potter Epilogue What Epilogue | EWE, Humor, M/M, POV Draco Malfoy, oblivious boys in love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-03
Updated: 2020-07-03
Packaged: 2021-03-04 20:15:08
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,973
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25042255
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tigersilver/pseuds/tigersilver
Summary: Everyone knows Drarry is real, the only people who don't are Harry & Draco.
Relationships: Draco Malfoy/Harry Potter
Comments: 20
Kudos: 193
Collections: Draco tops Harry 2020





	Plus One

**Author's Note:**

  * For [LittleBozSheep](https://archiveofourown.org/users/LittleBozSheep/gifts).



**The Gallery Show**

“Potter. It’s you.” 

With an elegant swoop, Draco fetched up by the familiar shock-topped figure of his one-time enemy, now sometimes sort of an ally in business and general good mate. 

“You don’t have a plus one, do you?” he continued, exchanging quick smiles with his nattily-robed counterpart at what they both jokingly referred to as the Ministry’s Troublesome Do-Gooders Foundation. “Funnily enough,” he said softly, leaning in and giving Potter a friendly shoulder bump, “neither do I.” 

“Nope,” Potter replied succinctly, eyeing the crowded venue warily through a pair of fashionable specs. “I don’t.” 

“Pity,” Draco observed, glancing about them and following Potter’s gaze as it bounced from couple to couple to--er?

Oh! There was Luna, naturally. Anything artsy like this attracted Lovegood like bees to honey, always. She, the Weasleyette and that chap Scamander, all bunched together in a little well-dressed lump, laughing and chatting over the canapes. Thick as thieves, as the Muggles said. Draco laughed softly, giving Potter a knowing look as the man turned back to him. 

“As we’re surrounded by the usual,” he remarked. “Pairs, more pairs and the occasional threesome.” He gave Luna a little wave, grinned at her pleased expression and jauntily raised an elbow for Potter, all in one motion. “So. Shall we? Work to do, right?” 

His cocked eyebrow of an invite was answered with a rueful grin and a chin-bob. A hank of Potter’s Sleakeasy-styled hair flopped charmingly over one smiling green eye. 

“Don’t mind if I do,” Potter said, graciously enough, and availed himself to Draco’s arm. “Er. Did she invite you?” he added curiously, tipping a head in Luna’s direction. “Or was it Dean himself?” 

For a moment he looked briefly struck by an apparently horrifying notion. 

“Wait, no, no, no! It wasn’t Hermione, was it? She’s always muttering dire things about my solitary state these days. It's more than a bit annoying.”

“No, no and no, to all of the above,” Draco responded easily, stepping a little more closely to Potter as the ever-growing throng of gallery invitees surged past. “Granger-Weasley has not muttered direly in my direction as of yet, thank Merlin. She likely leaves that to Pansy. Champion mutterer, our Pansy. This way, Potter.” 

He edged them nearer the safety of a very large and quite amorphous tentacle-y sculpture, all done up in polished marble and entitled ‘Luuuurve’. It had a shocking pink feather boa entwined about its many arm things and an oddly jaunty air about it. Draco silently supposed it succeeded, then, if the intent was to convey the exhilarated confusion of the emotion. 

Potter eyed it carefully but silently acquiesced to standing below its dubious shelter. A further rush of people entered the gallery, exclaiming with excitement, and barrelled by them on the way to the complimentary hors d'oeuvre buffet and drinks. Draco spotted Longbottom and, in the far distance, Madame Hooch, who was a known fancier of this modern art so en vogue at the moment. Particularly when it featured Dean, the latest darling of the Wizarding art world. He nodded and smiled at them too, gaining the same in return. 

“It was Blaise, in fact,” Draco replied after a moment of watching Potter do much the same with yet more friends and acquaintances, and quite a bit more loudly than before to be heard over the noisy din. “He says I need to ‘get out of my hole’, the nosy blighter.”

“Your ‘hole’?” Potter echoed, apparently vastly amused. “That’s rich. Has he even seen your office lately?” 

“Exactly! As if!” Draco sniffed. “The Goblins would never! Imagine them keeping me in a hole; I don’t bloody well think so! The sods wouldn’t dare. I only happen to manage a solid majority of the largest single charitable investment bloc held in their bloody bank and that’s not even addressing the various Brit-based Malfoy investments. They’d better damned well house me nicely. And they do, in fact.” 

“Huh, you don’t say,” Potter chuckled softly, bobbing along in agreement though his gaze turned longingly to the open bar. The mob had somewhat subsided as they’d been chatting. 

Draco, noting that, detached them from the sculpture and promptly set out in that direction, feeling much in tune with Potter’s apparent longing for palatable libations to accompany his weekly dose of ‘culture’. 

“You know?” Potter asked idly as they moved along. “He never ceases to surprise me, your Blaise. I’d not have thought he’d be that overly concerned, at least not with you, Malfoy. Goyle maybe, but not you. You seem so...so very much not in need of any sort of interference, these days. Very...focussed on your job. Competent, content even. Not missing anything, really.”

“I should hope so,” Draco grinned. “Learned my lesson; very reformed fellow now, Potter. As you know.” 

“As I know,” Potter echoed, all amiability as Draco brought them up to the bar and signaled the tender. “Terribly exemplary, really. Whisky, please.” 

“Yes, of course. And I’m so glad you think so.” 

“Oh, I do,” Potter replied, affecting great seriousness. “I do.” 

“Right-oh.” Draco said, hoving up to the rounded curve of the highly polished rail. He unhooked their elbows and leaned in, flicking two fingers up a second time to catch the distracted bartender’s attention. “Two Ogdens, if you would be so kind, sir. Neat. That all right, Potter? The usual.”

Glancing at his companion, he decided Potter wasn’t actually all that interested in the whys-and-wherefores of Blaise’s sudden commandeering of Draco’s social life. Or, if he was, it would be provident to ignore it. In any case he was clearly distracted again, being apparently entranced by an enormous nude painting of a well-endowed male ginger. 

“Er. Thanks ever so,” Draco said to the barkeep, when the tumblers promptly appeared before them. “Potter? Potter, here you are.” 

“Ta,” Potter said, wrenching his eyes off the full frontal of a rather prominent set of cock-and-bollocks and gratefully accepting his whisky. He downed half of it one go, much to Draco’s amusement. He tutted at Potter’s haste, but let it pass as he sipped his own. No sense in getting into a brangle over nothings, not this early in the evening, at least. Besides, Potter was hardly a hard-goer. It was likely for courage, nothing more. 

“Yes, so?” Potter said, his slight coughing fit subsiding and the smoke dissipating finally from his very fine ears. He pointedly took up Draco’s arm again and steered them off to a convenient alcove, well out of the way of the queue and the bustle. “Tell me. What’ve you been up to in the two days since I last saw you, Malfoy? I am deeply curious. I have been occupied by the dullest of paperwork, myself, so I hope to Merlin you’ve been better off.” 

“Well...since you’re so curious,” Draco drawled, before launching into an amusing tale of a recent Knockturn Alley donor, a brand-new one, who’d been vastly surprised to discover there was, indeed, a foundational charity devoted purely to the needs of succouring the waking consciousness of the Previous Doers of Vague Evil. Draco marvelled again, aloud and sardonically, at the willingness of all those ex-Deatheater families and their various hangers-on and business alliances to cough it up in the name of ‘setting things right again’. 

“Uh-huh, really? Is that so?” Potter said now and again, and did Draco the honour of providing his full and undivided attention. “Yes, that chap is a downy one, isn’t he. And his wife is...well. Least said, mate.”

“Indeed,” Draco willingly agreed. “Least said. Shall we?” 

Drinks clutched in paws, they commenced to wander towards the main galleries, where Dean’s latest oeuvre was on view. Draco kept Potter in smothered laughter throughout, though now and again they both paused, sometimes to chat with acquaintances and sometimes simply both struck by the amazing creations Dean Thomas produced on the regular. Potter would now and again comment on the vagaries of the Wizengamot and how they still hadn’t sorted their collective arses from their self-dug holes in the ground when it came to proper Ministerial Management of War Reparations and Draco would rather naturally laugh and indulge in a little good-natured scoffing. 

All in all, it was a most pleasant evening. One of increasingly many, Draco considered, taking his time over disrobing once he’d once again Disapparated to his posh Wizarding address in Belgravia’s tiny enclave of the still-wealthy-and-powerful Wizarding folk. 

He shrugged at his reflection in the loo mirror as he scoured his shiny white teeth with a charmed toothbrush. 

Blaise was wrong-headed, even so. Dreadfully misinformed, despite his cheery insistence that Draco was just in a state of woeful denial. Draco was not lonely. Draco was not in sore need of a shaggable companion, ta very much. Yes, yes, Potter was a decent enough chap, especially now they shared a common cause--or another one, really--and not half bad to look at, if one were thrust constantly in his company, as Draco had been these last few years. Potter was also quite fit and rather charmingly sharp-witted, and seemed not to hold the slightest grudge over times past, a facet of his personality Draco greatly appreciated. In fact, were Draco to be in the market for a relationship, Potter must always spring to mind as ‘top of the list’ mentally. 

But still. Blaise was mistaken. He and Potter had not a thing going on. Not a damned thing. To even consider it was just plain barmy. 

If he wanked in the shower to a shapely bum and a pair of startlingly bright green eyes, it was only just coincidence, really. Potter simply happened to be the only single Wizard Draco had much recent acquaintance with, that’s all. It was appallingly easy to think of him as opposed to any other random Witch or Wizard, and that was simply due to propinquity. 

And sex was just sex. It felt good, and wasn’t that the point?

* * *

**The Charity Ball**

“Potter.” Draco grinned, giving the man a quick once-over. “Quelle surprise. Unaccompanied yet again? You look alright, by the bye. I like the burgundy on you. Very smart.” 

“Pah,” Potter snorted. “Thanks.” 

He obligingly raised his elbow this time, silently invited Draco to latch on. 

“It’s to benefit my chances, according to Hermione. Though Hermione claims she’s given up on me as a lost cause, Mrs Weasley actually last tried it on with me months ago and I think has fallen back on sulking in silence about my eternal single state. Even Luna hasn’t bothered recently. I think she’s a bit caught up in this Scamander she and Gin have latched onto. At least I’m hoping it's so. You and Ron have been my only rational refuge since Dean and Seamus tied the knot and Nev got himself engaged.” 

“Oh, yes. That,” Draco agreed, angling a covert eye at the large company of assorted Wizarding folk, all tarted up in their finest and swanning about the dance floor. 

There, far away on the other side, he could just glimpse Luna, swirling about in a cloud of yellow chiffon and wearing what looked remarkably like a well-organized swarm of live bees in her flowing locks. A young man gazed down adoring at her and the Weasleyette was admiring them both from the sidelines. It was an extremely sweet scene and Draco silently wished Luna, in particular, well with it all. Luna was always happiest when there were more people to love, really.

“I had noticed Luna and Ginevra both were quite intrigued by young Scamander. That, at least, seems to be going quite swimmingly.” 

“Oh?” Potter looked up, cocking a curious eyebrow. “You say this as though something else isn’t. Going so well, that is. You alright, Malfoy?” 

“It’s sadly not, no,” Draco murmured, dipping his sleek head to mutter into Potter’s one ear. “Sorry to say.”

The pleasing odor of Sleakeasy’s struck his nose, making it wrinkle in pleasure. Potter didn’t always bother with the mop of whatever it was on his head he called hair, but every now and again, he did, and it seemed always to smell divine.

“Sorry to hear,” Potter said quickly, a note of genuine concern in his voice. “Want to talk about it?”

“Hsst! Over this way, alright?” He motioned to a curtained alcove a little ways off. “I'd rather not discuss this here, if you don’t mind. Privacy is my wont, Potter. As always.”

“Alright, alright,” Potter replied, gamely allowing Draco to nudge him into motion. “I’m just coming.” 

“Well, you’re not, actually,” Draco couldn’t help but smirk, a teasing gleam in his eye. “Not even breathing hard, really. Or so you continue to imply. It’s just too sad, I think.” 

“Shut it, you atrocious cad,” Potter smiled. “This is no time to bring up my dreary lack of a personal life. In fact, there’s never a good time to bring that up, git. Now. You were just about to tell me something about someone else’s, weren’t you? Yours, maybe? I could offer you my pocket square if you plan to weep.” 

“Well, yes I was,” Draco muttered, giving Potter a gentle yank on his arm to make him step lively, “but again. Not here. You know how people do gossip.” 

“Oh, that I do.” 

Potter made an indeterminate noise, managing to express a great deal of dislike as to how people gossiped and his bounteous experience with it.

“Right, never mind that,” Draco murmured, deftly steering them. “I know you know, Potter.” 

“Fucking well right.” 

“Come on, then.” 

He guided Potter round the edges of the area the orchestra occupied and set his eye upon a convenient pair of french doors set deep in that handy curtained alcove. The ballroom was ringed about with them and glimpses of a balcony could be seen through the darkened panes. The velvety drapes were thrown back on this particular one, providing a distant view of the evening lights of the bustling City and allowing in the buffets of a late spring breeze. 

“Oh, this is perfect. Much better.” He whisked Potter straight through, pausing to use his wand to flick the heavy velvet curtains closed behind them. “Prepare yourself, Potter.” 

“Wait, what, Malfoy?” Potter was chuckling as he turned to face Draco, the both of them having fetched up to the railing. “You’re being very mysterious, even for you. It’s not really terrible news, is it? Your mum’s alright?” 

“Hmm,” Draco hummed. “She’s fine, no worries.” He lounged sideways against the scrolled marble bannister, taking care not to smudge lichen upon his robe’s sleeve. “And it’s not precisely ‘terrible’, per se? But it’s not not, either. It’s a bit middling on the scale of alright to awful, you know? But tending more towards awful.” 

“No! You’re clear as mud, Malfoy,” Potter said sharply. “And now you’ve really worried me. Do stop. Who, exactly, are we talking about and what, exactly, has happened? Talk!” 

“Hmm.” 

Draco sighed. He was aware that this would be difficult. It had struck him as a sticky wicket the instant his mother had ended her usual weekend morning floo call. The problem lay not in whether Potter would go a bit berserk, but more in the degree of that berserk-ness and whether Draco could manage to calm him down enough to formulate a plan. 

“Well?” Potter prompted, tapping a very impatient foot. “I’m waiting, Malfoy. Get on with it, whatever it is.” 

“It’s. Well.” Draco hesitated, eyeing Potter with a rapidly rising feeling of nervousness. Really, he didn’t want to see Potter hacked off at him. He was just the bearer of the bad news, at least this time, and not actually to blame. “Well, you see--”

“Yes?” Potter chomped off the single syllable. “See what?” 

“It’s us.” Throwing his hands up, Draco blew out a frustrated breath. “It’s bloody us, alright?” 

“Us?” Potter looked mildly aghast. “What ‘us’? What do you even mean, ‘us’?” 

“My Mum flooed me this morning, alright? You know how she does.” 

“Yes.” Potter’s eyebrows remained tensely furrowed, the silvery remains of his scar picking up the ambient city lights. “Every weekend, like clockwork. And then what? Go on.” 

“It seems,” Draco sighed heavily, lowering his arms and folding them defensively across his chest. “It seems we are generally considered a couple, Potter. You and me.” 

“Er.” 

Potter’s teeth snapped. Draco watched with a wary eye as Potter’s Adam’s apple bobbed and his eyes narrowed to a viciously narrow set of jade slits. Genial mate-y Potter had vanished in the wink of an eye, seemingly.

“Pardon?”

“You and me, Potter.” Draco narrowly restrained himself from taking a prudent step backwards. This was, after all, not his actual fault. “My mum believes we’re together. Not only that, so does Blaise, despite his specious claims about my ‘hole’. So does, in fact, your Mrs Weasley, your Weasley-Grangers and the entire lot of them, our schoolmates. Apparently even your two very best mates are in accord with this notion: we are a Thing. An Item. Together, as in the shagging sense of the word. That’s all. I’m sorry.” 

He did his best to relate this information matter of factly. Deadpan, even-toned, not in the slightest bit dramatically. Truly, he owed it to Potter, who he knew very well did not appreciate sudden surprises, particularly the emotional sort, and enjoyed even less the spectacle of public enquiry into the state of his personal life. He and Potter, they’d had quite a few discussions of how much they each disliked intensely that sort of scrutiny. It was, honestly, one of the items they’d bonded over, early on. 

“I, ah.” Draco waved a carefully casual hand. “Just thought you might like to be made aware. That’s all. Like I said. Not truly horrible, really, but not really good, either. Right?” 

Potter’s personal life? What there was of it, Draco mused. Potter, like he himself, was really not, in any way, putting himself out in the field. Neither of them had the time and barely the inclination either. Especially not with spending practically every other evening and most weekends engaged in an endless round of social and business engagements, all in the name of sweet, sweet charity. They had work to do and it was honest, fulfilling work, and they neither of them had any difficulty setting aside the intricacies of having some sort of ridiculous ‘personal life’ on top of it. Bloody well no thanks to that idea!

“Ahem. Potter? You’re not saying anything here,” Draco prompted. “Um, don’t you agree with me?” 

“Well. Fuck. Yes! ” Potter started, grunted and half-stomped a heel hard on the slippery pavers, grinding it in as he shifted uncomfortably about, his fingers twisting his robes sleeves, his feet shuffling. “That’s. That’s bloody annoying.” He directed that to the balcony railing he gripped onto, glaring sufficient to crack the carved marble. “Really, really infuriating.” 

“Yes.” Draco nodded agreement, glad not to be subject of that intense gaze, this once. “That’s what I thought too. Thanks, by the bye, for not taking my head off for informing you. I quite thought you’d have a frothing fit, Potter. And I’d be taking the brunt of it.” 

He smiled tentatively at his companion, who gave him a brief flash of teeth in return, in the midst of a ripple of ill-content emotion. 

“Very nice not to have wands drawn over something absolutely not my fault, ta. Because it really isn’t.” 

“Hah!” Potter shoved fiercely at his glasses, glowering vaguely at everything about them but still not actually at Draco. “I’m hardly about to punish you for a fucking rumour, Malfoy. I think I’ve learnt my lesson about shite like that, don’t you? _Bother_.”

He turned away, but glanced back at Draco for an instant, shrugging as he bent forward to prop his arms upon the lip of the baluster and then plop his chin atop hands he’d folded very precisely together. His knuckles were whitened with tension. Potter was highly brassed off; Draco could hear his teeth grinding, ever so faintly, when he spoke.

“Assuming you’re at fault for this, this fucking travesty, well, that simply makes a damned arse out of you and me too, doesn’t it?" he grumbled. "Bugger all that for bollocks. And bugger them, for fucking just going ahead and thinking up this rubbish. Shameful! They should know better.” 

“True, true,” Draco allowed quietly, coming to lean his back up against the balustrade and attempt to look Potter square in the eye, ducking his head slightly at an awkward angle to manage it. “Sadly, no one is being buggered here, which is the utter unvarnished truth, whether the general public--and my matrimonially-minded mother, bless her cunning Slytherin heart--believe it or not. At least we know better.” 

“Yes.” Potter said this very firmly, his jaw flexing quite heroically. “We do. Question is--and I’m not wrong in assuming that's why you’ve dragged me out here, am I, Malfoy? The real question is, what to do about it.” He sniffed pointedly. “Because we rather need to do something, right? Or...not?” 

“Precisely so.” Draco thinned his lips. “I mean, technically, we should. It’s not true, what they’re all thinking. And I have given it some thought, Potty, and our options? Not so many. As in, practically nil. That’s the sad bit, don’t you know.” 

He sagged a bit, because it was, rather, and he didn’t particularly care to be having this conversation with a man he truly considered a friend. 

“They likely mean well, I suppose. There’s just not much to do about it. I’m sorry about that too, you know.” 

“No, I see what you mean,” Potter sighed, slouching forward even further, aimlessly thrusting his hands out over the edge in a wordless plea. “You don’t have to be sorry, alright? Can’t avoid each other, can we? Can’t have a faux tiff either. If we tell them we aren’t actually dating, they shan’t listen, I’m sure. Maybe Hermione and Ron might, if I absolutely stick them with it and keep on till they listen, but. Likely not.”

“Pansy, at least,” Draco interjected. “I should at least try, with her. But I’ll have to be very insistent, I’m afraid. There’s no guarantee.” 

“And Seamus will absolutely take any denial as full positive confirmation, being contrary, and your pal Blaise would be no better,” Potter went on, nodding along with Draco. “The two of them are the biggest gossips of our year. Next you know it’ll be all over town in a shot. If it isn’t already.” 

“No, it is, it is. Sorry, again. Everyone knows, trust me.” Draco nodded fervently as he twisted about, taking up much the same stance Potter had just abandoned, with his forearms resting on the balustre and his hands dangling uselessly before him. “Everyone.” 

“Right. Of course they do.” 

“Can’t date other people--no time to spare, too much work to do,” Draco continued, barely noticing when their elbows knocked together and their shoulders bumped. 

“No…”

As one, they gazed disconsolately out into the lovely velvety night. The resulting tingle of warm sensation was highly pleasant and quite reassuring but not quite sufficient to distract from the gravity of the situation. 

“And too much unnecessary distraction caused by it,” Draco went on, after a long moment, “what with mucking about in clubs and pubs and formal society dances. Bah! Who even has time for that?”

“Hear, hear,” Potter nodded glumly. “All the good ones are taken anyway.” 

“Can’t flee the country; get away from it all, either. Have to show at these silly fetes, don’t we?” Draco rambled on. “Goblins will never stand for it and I don't need my skittish Knockturn donors thinking I’ve embezzled their precious Galleons and sending a bloody Hit Wizard after me. No, no. Have to stay in town. Visible.” 

“Well, yes. The Minister’s hardly going to let me skive, is he?” Potter’s growl was melancholy. “I’ve ribbon cuttings and newspaper interviews and whatnot scheduled two years out. And it’s not as though we can just simply not attend these bloody things. Work is work.” 

He threw a thumb over his shoulder, indicating the benefit gala still in muted full swing behind the drapes. Choc-a-bloc with potential patrons for his and Draco’s various charity efforts and just awash in an ocean of guilt-money. 

“Too much at stake. Kingsley needs me to flash the sacred scar and keep those blasted Wizengamot berks in line when they threaten to undermine the funding my stupid fucking scar brings in. I’m like his personal watchdog or something. He’s not letting me go anywhere. Bother!”

“Exactly so, Potter. Bother!” 

A pathetically low silence fell between them, filled with the fumes of frustration. Draco racked his brain a bit more for even the most outrageous of options but he knew in his heart of hearts it was futile. He assumed Potter was coming to that same conclusion, hearing the profundity of sighs and indeterminate unhappy noises emanating from the man right next to him.

“Blast and damn, Malfoy,” Potter said at long last. “I hate to admit it, but…” 

“Uh-huh. Well. You said it, Potter. It’s looking a bit hopeless, isn’t it? Er?” 

Draco glanced behind him, fairly sure he’d seen the curtains rippling, even though the evening breeze had since subsided. And after all, they couldn’t be stood out on the balcony all night, bewailing circumstances and shirking their respective duties. 

“Right, yes, hmm. Hard place. Rock. Nothing to do, really. Except wait it out.” 

“Yes.” Potter frowned. “But.”

“But they’re all stubborn blighters, aren’t they?” Draco countered, having been down that mental path. “The Weasleys, my Mum. Your mates. And Blaise, that great tit. Once Blaise gets it in his handsome head a person’s gagging for another person, even if they are absolutely _not_ , he will not let it go for an instant. Believe me, I know! No, even if we protest most vehemently, they’ll not let it rest, none of them. My lot, at least, will be wanting every single lurid detail, even if there are none to give. Pansy will hound me to death.” He shivered, just thinking on that. “And Granger-Weasley too. She comes by to see me now and again, and it's always 'Saw you in the society column with Harry again this morning,' or 'How lovely it is you two have become such good friends, isn't it?' Speaking of 'assuming', Potter. Bit intrusive, that." 

“Mmm-hmm.” Potter’s peevish frown went full-blown scowl. “Ron and Hermione. Very thorough in the fact-finding department, trust me on that. The problem is what they might turn up whilst they go about it and I don’t want to be explaining to them why I’m not still in a relationship with that chap Byron from two years ago. Bloody creeper he was! No, no. Best not to say a thing about anything, really.”

“Nary a peep,” Draco agreed immediately. “Deflect and casually deny. But discreetly, of course.” 

“Of course.” Potter offered Draco a tiny pleased smile. “I’m rather decent at that, you know. Discreet denial.” 

“Yes, of course. But, Potter? It’s not all bad, this situation. I did say only 'middling awful', didn’t I? We’ll still be in each other's company all the time--the bloody assumed ‘plus one’--so we’ll be able to keep tabs on whatever nonsense it is they’re all thinking up next; compare notes, make excuses, all that. Make sure they don't marry us off when we're not looking, right? And at least we find each other’s company quite tolerable,” Draco offered gamely. “And that’s not changed, at least I don't think so. Imagine if this had been the situation even just a few years ago? We’d have been wands drawn at dawn.” 

“True.” Potter’s eyes twinkled as he visibly brightened right up. “Very true. I must admit I no longer have the unbearable urge to biff you on sight. Nor do I miss it.” 

“Nor hex me with boils. And I do appreciate that, Potter. Believe me.” Draco mustered up a cheese-eating grin, though he was afraid it might come across more as a flaccid sneer. “I, er, appreciate _you_. Your undeniable charms seem to have grown upon me exponentially--oh, er! Ulp!”

“Uh?” Potter’s eyebrows climbed and plateaued. He blinked rapidly. “Malfoy.”

"Sorry!" 

Draco cut himself off with a strangled gawp, having finally fully comprehended what the sounds of his own stupid voice had spewed, saying those damning words, all in a jumble. Those ill-advised words, poorly strung together, which Potter might have the understandable idiocy to take entirely in the wrong sort of way! Because it certainly wasn't as if Draco would ever even dream of--oh, no!

“Ah! No!” Draco went full-on denial. “I don’t mean that! What I mean is--I meant--it’s not that I--oh, fuck _all_ -Potter?”

“Pfft! Barmy git.” Potter cut off Draco’s vapid babble with a startled laugh. “No need to trip over your own tongue, apologizing. I know what you meant by it. And you’re not wrong.” 

“I-I’m not?” Draco stuttered before instantly collecting himself. “Oh, right.” He stood up straight, smoothing down his sleeve and settling his cuff just so. “Of course I’m not wrong.” 

“Okaaay,” Potter snickered. “No, never. Never wrong, of course not.” Draco earned an amused stare with a keen edge to it. “That utter shite aside, and because I really don’t fancy landing you a facer right at the moment, you aren’t, though. Wrong. This time.” 

“Oh? How so, then?” Draco was genuinely curious. “Elucidate. I’m not certain if my _not wrong_ is the same as your _not wrong_ , Potter. Two _not wrongs_ don’t necessarily make a _right right_ , you know.”” 

“Shut up! That was awful,” Potter scolded, still laughing. He sobered up fast enough though when Draco frowned at him. “Yes, as I was saying, I believe they are.”

“Are?”

“Are not completely off the rails, mate. Think on it. We’re the last two of our year not married, engaged or in a long-term relationship, Malfoy,” Potter listed patiently, sticking up his fingers as he went and ticking them off. “Nature always abhors a vacuum, apparently. All our married, engaged or otherwise attached friends, family and classmates have gone broody over our woefully single states and decided in unison it’s an abomination before Merlin. Can’t be allowed, right?” 

“Bloody right,” Draco muttered darkly, snorting. “Dire.” 

“Dreadful. Not to be bourn.” Potter shrugged eloquently. “So? No more ‘plus ones’ on our invites, no more pressed into blind dates, no more harping eternally over how gallingly lonely it must be to exist, single and unattached and not even making an effort,” Potter went on, a bitter note in his voice. “‘Oh, poor Harry!’ He made air quotes, snarling. “Huh! Now it’s just as though they’ve assumed we’re together, like it or not, because who else even is there?” Grimaced, he shoved his hands into his well-fitted trouser pockets. “It’s not going to blow over, Malfoy. Mark my words.” 

“I know.” Draco heaved a sigh, humping a hopeless shoulder. “I was just saying that to make you feel better, you know. I didn’t really believe it or anything. Just, er. Wanted to buck you up a bit.” 

“Good.” Potter nodded firmly, shoving his specs back up his nose. “Thank you.” He smoothed his hair back off his forehead, producing a charming little widow’s peak quite by accident. “As long as we’re on the same page.” 

“Same page, same line, same period,” Draco agreed, eyeing the curtains, twitching ever so slightly yet again. He frowned at them, suspicious. “Full stop. But, ah? I do think perhaps we ought be moving along here, Potter. You know how it is at these fetes, all that champagne flowing, all those relationships.” He smirked. “I believe our balcony might be in demand by someone who wants their privacy for more than to merely lament the appalling lack of it.” 

He jerked his chin towards the drapes, now clearly rustling. A smothered laugh issued from behind them, and the unmistakable sound of a giggling scuffle. 

“Oh? Oh! I see,” Potter said, twigging it, his gaze darting to the drapes gone askew. “Yes, alright," he agreed. "We should get on with it then. Shall we go in? Maybe dance?” 

“Definitely dance,” Draco agreed immediately. “I’m gagging for some exercise. Been on broom bristles-and-wand tips since my mother called. Meetings all bloody week before that, and then we both missed pickup Quidditch last week because working brunch ran so ghastly late. My poor arse is flattened from all the sitting, I’m sure. Do let’s dance. I could quite fancy a nice gavotte and I believe there was one listed on the card for later. Right after the polka and just before the waltz.” 

“Right, this way then, but first we’re dancing to the Weird Sisters classic they’re playing now. I like music made by living people, Malfoy. Indulge me.” 

“Always.” 

Potter smiled up at him agreeably, and arm in arm they exited, the matter of their mangled up mock-romance safely shelved away and dismissed. 

* * *

**Thursday Pub Night**

“Granger-Weasley.” 

Draco nodded, smiling all around the crowded booth table. 

“Weasley-Granger. Hullo, Longbottom, nice to see you, for once. Luna, Pans, a pleasure, as always--oh, and of course you too, Potter. Here you are, then.” Draco gestured back over his shoulder at the string of floating drinks that had followed him over from the bar. “Oi. Budge over, Potty, do.” 

“Ta, Draco,” Hermione nodded, happily taking up her mulled cider as it hovered before her. “A good evening to you.” 

“And to you.” 

Ronald snagged his pint out the air with an inchoate cry of wordless gratitude, immediately getting to the quaffing. Pansy sent him a nod and a glittering smile but didn’t interrupt the flow of impassioned words pouring out of Luna. ‘Something, something, save the bottlebrush flies!’ Draco heard, or thought maybe he did. 

He shook his head; no matter. No doubt Luna would corner him and ask him to ante up the appropriate amount of galleons if she decided the endangered bottlebrush flies needed them sufficiently. Or Potter. Or both he and Potter, if she really felt strongly. 

Shrugging it off as a trouble not to go looking for at the moment, he settled his aching spine against the firm wooden slab backing of the booth with a sigh and prepared to drift along, safe in the comfort of his friends after a long and miserable day arguing interest rates with the Goblin Governor’s Board in Switzerland and defending his budget from his own donors. 

He was pressed up close against Potter but that was nothing remarkable. There would be more of their friends arriving as the night wended on and each one would bring along with them the customary round and pile on in around the ever-extending table, crowding merrily and ultimately squashing the majority of the surviving Hogwarts Class of ‘98 (plus some) all together in a U-shaped mass of teasing, squabbling, raucous but generally copacetic inebriation. Then Tom would boot them all out and they’d all squawk about it but they’d still go peaceably home and get up for the next morning. No, Thursday Pub Night had become a sacred institution and Draco had never been more grateful for it than this particular Thursday.

“Hey,” Potter murmured, leaning in familiarly after he’d finished some low-voiced exchange with Granger-Weasley. “Rough day? You look shattered. Alright?” 

“Spectacular,” Draco drawled, and threw back his Ogden's in one long clean swallow, following it up with a gulp of Tom’s best draught draw-down. 

“Uh huh.” Potter looked unconvinced. “If you say so.” 

“No, no. Really. Bloody perfect,” Draco asserted earnestly as soon as the steam was finished exiting his ears and he could speak again. “I am splendid.” 

Potter stared wordlessly at him, green eyes gentle on Draco’s wan droopiness, narrowing when they alighted on the smudges under his eyes. 

“Never. Fucking. Better.” 

“Ah.” Potter shifted, hip and thigh to Draco’s. “So.” One hand came carefully down and gave Draco’s kneecap a little conciliatory pat. “That bad, then. I’m sorry.” 

“Yeah.” Draco sipped his pint, his shoulders easing as the alcohol took its course and settled his jangled nerves and rubbed-raw temper. “But it’s over now, at last. I do abhor budget enquiries, Potter, for the record. They’re quite possibly worse than Cruciatus and I should know.” 

“I know you do, Malfoy,” Potter replied, exuding sympathy. “Everyone does.” He patted Draco’s kneecap once more, smiling, then shot up the other and snapped his fingers, raising his voice above the din of the barroom. “Oi, Tom? Tom! Over here, if you please!” 

“What?” Draco cocked an eyebrow, startled. “I was just up there; I just got everyone their--”

“Relax, Malfoy. You’re empty already, aren’t you?” Potter cut him off smartly. Another generous tumbler of whisky appeared on the table before Draco, still wisping oily blue smoke. “Have another on me, mate, that’s it. You look like you need it. Think of it as a bit of public service on my part if it makes it go down easier, alright? Charity, Malfoy. Starts amongst friends, right?”

“Very well, then. Ta, Potter.” 

Draco set down his pint and carefully took up the fresh glass, eyeing it thoughtfully. He ran a finger down the side, tracing a random pattern in the sticky condensation and heaving a heavy sigh. The random tracing looked like a messy ledger, but that was really only to be expected. 

“I was successful, though. You lot will get your especial Muggleborn kindergarten programme entirely funded by the Knockturn Alley Mostly Harmless Do-Gooders Charitable Foundation.”

“Really?” Potter looked thunderstruck--and all at once quite wonderfully excited. “Now that’s fucking splendid, Malfoy. Well done you!” 

Draco smiled, feeling his spirits lightening already. He did rather enjoy it when things went according to his scheming. Especially Potter-pleasing things, as Potter was so honestly chuffed when Draco pulled that shite off. 

“Why, thank you,” he drawled, flicking a stray peanut shell off the table and batting his lashes in Potter’s direction. “Not that I’m not offended you ever doubted me, you know. Because I am. For the record. I said I’d do it, didn’t I?” 

“Prick,” Potter chuckled, elbowing him. “Git. Bounder.” 

“You bet, Potter,” Draco smiled, “and you’d better be glad I am a first class bastard, as it’s how I get things done around Gringott’s. Ever since they made those connexions with those Muggle hedge fund managers--imagine going about telling people you’re managing a hedge, Potter? I mean, what even were they thinking, calling them that?--Gringott’s Board has been bloody unbearable about hoarding. I can’t say those hedge fund twats have been a good influence and you know for fact I’m not a Muggle hater anymore. Some money is meant to be spent; we're all better off that way. Quite of lot of it, nowadays.” 

“Hear, hear! I do know,” Potter said, “but it’s alright. And I agree with you. Not all Muggles are ‘good’ people, Malfoy. Some of them are really rather horrid. Some of them are bloody evil. Like Umbridge.”

“Too right,” Draco said, slamming his empty down with a thunk. “Or your Dursleys. For a genuine Muggle example. Scum.” 

“Yes, alright, enough of that,” Potter shrugged off Draco’s comment, bringing his glass up and toasting. “Cheers to my kindergarten programme, alright? Drink up, mate. You did so very well this week, despite them.” 

Draco laughed weakly but followed suit. There was another thing Potter was good for: he always found something bright in the dark. Like a lodestar, really. It was heartening, and for that Draco was warmly grateful. 

* * *

**The Charity Banquet**

Draco was just barely on-time to be announced at the door; pesky investors had come pounding on his door of his plush office in Gringotts last moment with a list of inane queries. But here was he, same as usual of a Friday evening, dressed to the nines and sauntering around the edges of the crowd like some species of posh hawk, keen eyes searching for that familiar head of hair and the glint of silver-rimmed specs. 

He spotted him at last--a table happily near the rear of the great hall, this time--and snagged two champers flutes off a passing floating tray with a little grin of satisfaction. Doubtless Potter would have his usual libations in order, but it was always nice to surprise the man with a spot of passing gallantry. An extra glass of champagne was never a thing to say ‘no’ to, right?

He was still smiling when he got close enough to the relatively intimate table Potter was sat at and took in at last the striking fact that Potter was not alone. Not this time. 

This time there was a plus-one. 

Draco stopped, dead in his tracks, inhaling sharply. Not a gasp so much as a knife of air, cutting through his chest and causing a pang of the like he’d never felt before. He didn’t quite stumble though it was a near-miss. No, he’d enough fortitude of mind not to make a total fool of himself beside the dance floor. 

He even kept hold of the flutes, though his fingers may’ve been trembling just the merest amount. It was a chilly feeling, holding charmed glasses of champagne, generally, so he excused himself for it even as he glared at them briefly before re-focussing sharply on the occupants of the table. 

He moved on, urging his feet to take one step and then another, mainly because it was incredibly gauche to stand stock still in the midst of a crowd of partygoers, and worse yet to simply stare a’gawk at someone--make that two someones, clearly together!--like a bloody buffoon. 

There was, indeed, his familiar place card. And yes, he was to be seated next to Potter, as per custom. 

Potter, however, instead of impatiently eyeing the doorway in search of him or even chatting up random passer’s by and the odd friend as he awaited Draco’s entrance, had his attention entirely zero’d in on a lovely Witch seated close by his side. The woman was chatting animatedly away, gesturing like a mad moth with elegant fingertips and Potter was hanging off every single word of it, it seemed. And she was lovely. Quite, quite striking, and with kind eyes. Draco could see the twinkle of laughter reflected in them even from paces away still. He could hear her musical laugh entwined with the deeper notes of Potter’s appreciative chuckles and admire her rather brilliant choice of attire, all of which set her features and figure off to the highest degree. A nonpareil, indeed. 

Which one small part of Draco did indeed appreciate, naturally, as another much larger part of him forced his feet to keep on pacing, steadily, sedately, towards Potter’s table. And towards his own beckoning place card, sitting forlorn at his empty seat. 

She--whoever it was she might be and Draco had not a single fucking clue, having never in his life seen her before--must be a fabulous conversationalist. Potter didn’t even glance up as Draco arrived. 

“Potter,” Draco spoke up, having cleared his throat softly at first with no immediate effect, and nudged one of the champagne glasses he’d set carefully down upon the table towards his--towards his friend. “Oh, Potter.” 

That _was_ correct, was it not? Potter, Draco’s _friend_. A man perfectly free to choose his companions at will and arrive at a gala event with an actual ‘plus one’, should he so choose. With a studied flourish, swallowing bile, Draco gracefully set the other glass down before the unknown Witch who so entranced Potter. 

“Don’t be a rudesby. Do introduce me.” 

* * *

**Sunday Working Brunch**

Draco was restless, his fingers twitching as the Quik Quill scratched away, diligently filling his planner with notes as the words fell and fell from Potter’s lips. He fiddled with his coffee cup, the buttery shreds of his abandoned croissant, his wand and then the tiny sugar tongs that kept annoyingly tumbling from their precarious perch. Not really looking at Potter, so much. For some reason he really didn’t feel like it. Very strange, that was, when usually he enjoyed watching Potter’s face, as it was so mobile and so often smiling. 

“--Malfoy? I say, are you listening?”

“I’m sorry,” Draco blinked. He raised his eyes from the tablecloth briefly, taking in Potter’s tired eyes and the bit of missed scruff on his chin. It must’ve been a late night last night, at least for Potter. “Did you say something, Potter?” 

His gaze instantly darted away again, surveying the cafe. It was Eulalie’s, a relatively newer place situated at the park end of Horizont Alley, and it served quite the best puddings and breakfasts in the entirety of the Wizarding district. Consequently it was packed to the brim with brunchers and tea-takers and sundry Sunday strollers, all spilling out of the quaint interior and mobbing the several out-of-doors tables the owner set out in fine weather. In fact, he and Potter had only snagged one of the coveted inside tables simply because Potter was Potter, the Saviour, and Draco was known to be That Young Malfoy, a rather significant figure in charity for impecunious students, ta very much, and thus directly responsible for their usual server--Letty--having all their Hogwarts books and supplies provided no charge. 

“Yes!” Potter glared fiercely and then stopped, quite abruptly, peering at Draco. “Look, are you alright? You look bloody awful, is all. And you’ve barely heard a word I’ve been saying all this time.” 

“I’m fine,” Draco replied automatically. “Right. Say again?” 

“I was telling you Nev thought it was a good idea to be proactive about the Amazon, Malfoy. He’s got several schemes in mind for it already. You heard Marie last night, didn’t you? I’d’ve sworn you were listening and agreeing with her as much as I was.” Potter sniffed, poking at the remains of his egg dish with a little discontented growl. “You certainly seemed all ears pricked up when she was talking, that’s for certain. Maybe something else, too; who knows? Not that I’d blame you a bit for it. Marie’s bloody wonderful.” 

“Yes,” Draco replied blankly. “Yes, she is. If one is so inclined, of course. But I am afraid I missed what you just related about Longbottom. It’s likely in the Quick Quills, though, so no matter.”

“Yes, but it’s not the same, is it?” Potter asked, clearly disgruntled. “Usually we discuss these things, brangle a little maybe, sort them all out, but today you’re acting like you’d be rather anywhere other than here, with me.” 

“Right, no,” Draco said flatly. “That’s not true. But look here, I do believe you’re correct on one thing. I’m not really feeling my best.”

“Yes, I can see that,” Potter interrupted him, the fleeting anger completely overtaken by patent concern. “You’re pale. Ghostly. And you were pale last night too. You should likely go back to your flat and have a decent lie-down. Which is sort of a shame, because I wanted to ask you something--not business!--and this morning seemed like a good time for it. But it can wait, especially if you’re not feeling the thing. So go on with you. Be off home and I’ll settle up.” 

“I...” Draco hesitated. “You.”

He was Potter’s friend, was he not? And a good friend was always at hand when he was needed. If Potter needed him, then he...well, it behooved him to at least listen. Besides, it wasn’t as though he was actually physically ailing. It was more like something was off. As if something inside him had gone all akilter, out of alignment, perhaps. Or mayhap it was the universe itself. But...something. 

“No. I can wait,” Draco said firmly. “I’m not exactly at death’s door yet. Go on then. Talk to me, Potter.”

Potter flushed immediately and it was his gaze that skittered off into the distance this time, not Draco’s.

Then he took a deep breath and visibly squared his shoulders and sat up much straighter in his seat, facing Draco full-on. 

“I was thinking,” he burst out, all in a rush, but in a low enough voice that Draco had to lean in to hear him clearly. “That what we were talking about--you know, the other night? Friday evening, on the balcony. About all our friends and your mum and Mrs Weasley just assuming we’re shagging--all that. And I was thinking, well, you know, I sort of said to myself, Harry, maybe it’s not a bad idea, okay, what they’re all thinking about us. Maybe we should give it go, have some fun with it--have a fucking shag sometimes, right? With each other, I mean. Merlin knows it’s been long enough since either of us--I mean, it’s pretty damned lonely, sometimes, just wanking, isn’t it? And we two, we know one another, yes? Very well now, and I think I can say we trust each other to not--to not push, okay? Or to expect things we oughtn’t, but just. Just have a shag now and again? If you like? As friends, Malfoy.”

Draco was on his feet before he realized he was moving, the errant sugar tongs spinning away to clatter on the tile, his coffee mug tipped over and dregs spilling, his mouth open, and then still open, and yet nothing coming out. 

Nothing easy. Nothing matey. 

“I--” he managed, and Disapparated. 

* * *

**In His Flat**

Draco slammed the floo and his wards shut with a vengeance, the moment he’d steadied himself enough to do so. And then viciously doubled his wards, using the extra-special secret ones his mother had taught him, and started stripping off his clothes as he dodged the settee and stalked to his drinks cabinet. 

It was a tick past noon and he and Potter always had working brunches and so seldom imbibed, but this was--

This was. Indescribable. 

The sharp pang, the feeling of sinking, the restlessness of belonging no particular where and to no especial when or to whom was back, redoubled, nay, tripled in intensity. A welter of formless anguish stole his breath; he was speechless. Couldn’t even curse when he nearly dropped the decanter. 

And Draco was so very, very tired. Exhausted, wobbling on his pins, and every movement wrenchingly painful and so fucking slowed down to a crawl by this horrible state of internal inertia it ached through him, needles-and-pins; Cruciatus. The boom of his own heartbeat, deafening and dull; the faint sound of his shirt buttons ripping off as he struggled free of it, the glassy hollow thud of the decanter clipping the rim of the tumbler and the glug of the liquid--all unbearable, horrid, hateful. 

He drank deep and then drank again, tipping his head back and wishing he could just pour the whisky straight in the hole in his chest, perhaps fill it to the brim. Make the echoes cease, the sound of Potter saying over and over again ‘As friends, Malfoy’.

‘As friends’, Draco scoffed, sour and wilted and limp, his arm falling down by his side, glass emptied. As if! 

He only wished to sleep and to not think. Not think at all about what Potter had just said to him. What Potter had offered him, guilelessly, with a hand laid forward on the brunch table confidingly and the trust he spoke of so clearly alight in his eyes. 

He wished so sincerely to _not think_ , because it would’ve been so very easy, so simple, to say ‘Yes, Potter, let’s do that. Let’s just have ourselves a nice little shag now and again, as friends.” 

And Potter would’ve probably raised that hand he’d extended, the one laid so close to Draco’s their fingertips had brushed together--the sole moment Draco felt he was even present and accounted for during all that long interminable brunch--and he could have so easily taken it up, a gift unlooked for, but thoughtlessly accepted. 

It would’ve been so easy. Draco stared down at his mussed bed as he climbed into it, no memory really of shucking his trousers or pants or of even how he’d managed to walk to his bedroom. Potter’s face, it reflected there, imprinted before Draco’s eyes against the blank white pane of the pillow slip, all green eyes wide open and lips parted and the little dark scruffy whiskers wreathing it intriguingly a’bristle. It was such a dear face. Familiar and friendly and engaging. Draco oftentimes found himself just looking at Potter, simply because he enjoyed doing so. 

He could have been looking at Potter spread across his own bed, right now. This moment. That dark ruffle of hair on his rumpled sheets, those hands holding him, that mouth open and wanting. 

Draco lay still, back turned against the doorway, the duvet brushing his bare legs and tormenting them by the sheer weight of being. Dry-eyed and wide-eyed as the day died slowly outside his windows, and sleep didn’t deign to make an appearance, cruel thing. 

Cruel thing, this, all of it. To be offered blithely what Draco hadn’t even known to admit he desired, and then to deny it.

Except he’d not. Not really. He just...gone. 

But should he have? Should he, indeed, when Potter was correct? They were both busy men, and not otherwise accounted for, and it made so much sense to just--to simply take advantage of that. To do the deed and not consider the consequences. Who would it even harm? Draco asked the still, cold space inside him. Who would care? Everyone already assumed they were shagging, after all. Potter was spot on when he’d said they trusted one another, that they could have some fun with it. Be trusted not to push, not to--not to. 

Want things they oughtn’t. Potter had said that. Draco could hear it again, on constant reprisal, same as he could hear ‘As friends, Malfoy.’ 

He’d gone. He knew full well why it was he had, too. 

It was dawn when he struggled out of bed, had a piss, and finally made his way to his floo. He opened it just long enough to send a message to his assistant at Gringotts informing them he’d been called away unexpectedly. 

He made tea, ate a piece of toast, had a shower. Thought and considered and acted out scenes in his head endlessly, same as he’d done all through the night, and then it came to him. He should, actually, go away. Flee farther. Maybe not out of England, but at least London. 

He wasn't deaf. He’d heard the flare of his blocked floo and beat of owl wings against his windows and even the slight tremulous waver in his reinforced wards all night long, and Potter? Potter was a stubborn git. Draco knew that like he knew his own wand. Potter would never give up, he’d never stop trying. And it would be so very easy just to give in and open them all up, the floo and the window and his chest where the void was and let Potter come though and fill them for a while. 

Too easy. 

Treacherously so. He needed to go.

* * *

**By the River Wylye, Wilts**

The river was a place Draco had always loved as a child. Bordering the edge of the manor lands, its smaller tributaries trickled and wended through the familiar fields and copses Draco had flown his broom over many times. But just beyond the boundaries of his ancestral home existed the river Wylye proper, and there lay a solitary bendy stretch of it oft populated by swans and very seldom by Muggle anglers which had always been Draco’s most favourite. 

Whenever he could, he’d come there, landing his broom down by the lapping waters and trickling his fingers in it. Toes, too, in the heights of summers. It was quiet there, and the always moving flow of the clear waters extended a younger Draco--so restless, so anxious, so angry--a sense of serenity he’d sorely needed. 

There’d been no other place to go, really. 

“You.” 

Draco blinked. This was impossible. 

“Are hands down the singular most difficult git I have ever, ever known, Draco Malfoy.” 

But, miraculously there was by the banks of Draco’s river a most impossible Potter, simply standing there, not even ten paces off, looking grim as houses, and speaking sternly. At Draco, who should have been nearly as UnPlottable as Potter’s bloody old house. 

“I tried all night, Malfoy. All bloody day after you’d left me and then all bloody night and then most of today too, and fucking nothing, Malfoy. Not a hint, not a clue where you’d done a bolt to, nor why you wouldn’t answer my floos, my owls--nothing. I tried your wards, even. Afraid something terrible--I can’t even. Did you know any of that? Did you know--or even care--that I was a hairsbreadth away from flooing Ron and calling the Aurors down on you? I was. Damn you.” 

Potter, he looked haggard. As shite as Draco felt, likely. He blinked again when Potter drew closer but he didn’t speak. 

What was there to say?

“Tried your mother, finally. Well, tried again. First time she said she’d no idea. But this time she told me of this place. Gave me a sort of description. I’m here, at least; I found you. I needed so much to find you. Have I managed to say that yet?” 

Another step forward but Draco held his ground. Potter’s shoes, he noticed, were damp and quite muddy, as were his trousers. There was a bramble stuck in his hair. His eyes were reddened. Lack of sleep? 

“You. Draco, I don’t. I’m not even angry, really; I was far more terrified than angry all through. And it wasn’t you, it was me, mostly. I didn’t say it the right way, yesterday. It took me ages to sort it but all I could think was that I was so much hurt, and then furious with you for leaving without a bloody word, and I couldn’t reach you, just couldn’t, all day and all night, and then I thought. I thought that if I felt that way, you must also. All because I didn’t manage to say what I needed to say, yesterday, not even a little bit. I only said what I thought you might want to hear, right? And it wasn’t true, at least not the important bits. Listen?” 

Draco listened. He couldn't not, for Potter was right there, and had his palm wrapped about Draco’s jaw, effectively sticking him forever in that particular spot in the universe until he should consent to leave go. 

By the banks of the Wylye, the river coursing by, and it was a balm and beautiful, but Potter? Potter was by far more beautiful even than that. All of him, earnest and true and very nearly in Draco’s embrace if only he could but lift a hand to grab on. 

“Listen.”

Potter blinked up at him. Draco stopped breathing and cursed his lovely river for rushing so heedlessly. And listened. 

“You are my friend, of course you are. My dearest one, I think. And I also want you, very much. This.” A thumb wisped across Draco’s lips for an instant. “I want this, your mouth on mine. Your body, all of it, any of it you’ll share--I want that. But I want more, even. I want you to know that. That you are who I think of, constantly. I want you to be happy, and not be ever. Not ever to feel you’re being forced, or feel as if you have to give me anything, anything you’d rather not. And I, I was stupid, or frightened--something like that, I don’t know. It’s fucking bloody difficult to tell someone as self-contained as you are that you love them. At least, not as much as I bloody love you. I made such a mess of it, Draco. I never even came close to saying how much, how deeply. That of course you're my friend but you’re also my whole bloody life. Or even how I miss you, so much, when we don’t see each other. How I like dancing, when it’s with you. That I. That I think I understand it, now, why you left me yesterday. I’m so sorry, Draco. The last thing I ever meant to do was hurt you, not when I love you like this. The very last thing.” 

“Harry.” 

“So I came here, because I had to find you, and tell you how I didn’t say it right the first time, that I love you like that. All my heart. And I’m stupidly sorry. Please forgive me?” 

“Harry.” 

One movement, enfolding, all-encompassing, swift and sure. Tucking his face into Harry’s wild hair, breathing in the scent of his neck through a nose clogged with tears, and feeling a wild, rising laughter, Draco both inhaled and was rendered breathless by a bolt-shock collision of his entire world coming together, setting itself to rights. The Wylye carried on in its ages-old stately race and slowly, surely lent its peace to Draco’s maelstrom, leaching out his pain through a veil of indistinct murmurings, a sense of returning place. Harry’s voice and the river merged, blending imperceptibly, and Draco could’ve have moved again, if he cared to, but it was everything he wanted and desired, right where he already was, in Harry’s hands. 

“Harry.” 

A singular place and an improbable person, one especial one in particular.

“Bloody hell, Harry.”

“Do you see, though? I was the one at fault, Draco, but I do, you know? Really love you. And it all seemed to make sense in this mad way. What they were all thinking. Us being each other’s plus ones--but only because I already loved you, understand? But I didn’t know if you did, or if you didn’t yet but maybe one day you could do, then...then. If I could only persuade you to give it a go. Do you see?” 

Harry jabbered on, and Draco revelled in the sound of it and reverb of the lungs filling beneath his clutching hands, powering on the beloved voice blathering nonsense about fault and blame when there were only the two words that truly mattered and needed to be heard. Impatient, he drew back far enough to stopper the nonsense parts with a lightning press of lip-to-lip.

“Idiot, shut up. I love you too, Harry. But do shut up. Please!”

“Draco?” 

“Yes. I do, of course I do. And maybe you were a bit of an arse, Harry, but I was too, you know. I very nearly said yes.” 

Harry’s eyes widened in quick comprehension. 

“Oh.” 

“Exactly,” Draco said mournfully. “You keep insisting I’m all this and all that, Harry, but I’m only still me, you know.” 

“Well…” 

“No.” Draco shook his head. “It would’ve been awful; the worst possible thing I could ever do. I couldn’t have managed it for long, pretending, and then I would’ve fucked it all up so badly, Harry.” 

“Neither could I, you know,” Harry said. He waggled his eyebrows hopefully. “Maybe it would’ve worked itself out in the end.” 

“Maybe,” Draco allowed. “But not likely. I couldn’t risk that, not with you. Not for your sake, Harry, nor for mine. It’s better this way, but you’re not to take on all the blame; I won’t allow you.” 

Harry grinned and nodded, come over all mischievous and elfen in the lowering woodland light. “Yes, alright. Fine. May we go shag now?” 

Draco blinked. Felt a bit as though he’d got himself caught in a Muggle revolving door. 

“Um, no. Honestly, Harry, I’m running on adrenaline and a lot of leftover anxiety right now, I don’t believe I’ve slept much at all, not in days. Not to say I don’t want my cock buried balls-deep in that impertinent arse of yours, because I so do, but not till I can promise to provide the care and attention it deserves. Besides, I love you and you look like something my mum’s kneazle dragged in. We need sleep, first. Then shagging.” 

Harry fell back into Draco’s arms, burrowing his face into Draco’s shirt and sighed mightily, huffing. 

“Good. I’m shattered, and I want you too, ever so much, but if you’d agreed, I’d have had to hex you. Yours or mine, then?”

“Mine, I think,” Draco replied, swamped with a wave of love so deep he nearly foundered, just standing there. “Give me moment, though.” 

“Mmm,” Harry hummed, obliging. “All the time in the world, now.” 

“Better times yet to come, even,” Draco agreed, kissing Harry’s brow through the tumble of his hair. “A good wash up, too, I think. You’ve my river in your hair, Potter. How did you even manage that?” 

“Wonky coordinates,” Harry said promptly. “Landed in the middle, I did. Swans, Draco. Nasty creatures.” 

“Have you met my peacocks lately?” Draco remarked lightly, tightening his grip. “Right, no matter. All in good time. Ready, Harry?” 

“Always ready, Draco.” 

“Brilliant. Say that to me again in about eight hours and I’ll show you what ‘always ready’ will get you.” 

“Promise me? No take backs?” 

“On my honour.” 

“Holding you to that, Malfoy.” 

“Just shut up and hold on, Potter! Here we go, then.”

With a pop they Disapparated. And, as it happened, precisely eight hours and the time allotted to one very rapid shower later, Harry did duly ask Draco to honour his promise, smirking all the while. And got exactly what he thoroughly deserved and desired, the bugger. 

Plus one, for good measure.


End file.
